POLITICAL NOTES: Republican Rift?

G.O.P. Chairman Joe Martin felt a stomach-chilling temblor when anti-Willkie feeling in Congress and the party, rumbling, hissing, giving off steam, threatened to split the party in two.

First came a report from French Lick that Indiana Republicans had issued a manifesto, read Wendell Willkie out of the party for his support of the Administration’s foreign policy. The report was false, but gave a fair indication of the feelings of many a Republican politico.

Then Missouri’s obstreperous Dewey Short stood up in the House, flailed his long arms, popped off in his best alliterative style: “Wee Windy War Willkie. . . . Oh, this bellowing, blatant, bellicose, belligerent, bombastic blowhard. . . . God forgive me for ever having supported such an impostor. … I really would like to take the gloves off and sail into Mr. Willkie as he deserves.”

To many an isolationist Republican Congressman, Willkie is still as profane a word as Roosevelt. Yet, with primaries only a few months away, it was time for politicians to listen to the voice of the people back home—and last week there was little comfort in that voice for diehards:

> Last week the Kansas City Star’s able Washington Correspondent T. C. Alford concluded an opinion-sampling swing through Missouri and Kansas. His report: “In . . . the center of the Midwest isolationist belt, people no longer talk about the chances of keeping the United States out of the war but . . . discuss with vigor whether or not this country should enter the war now and get the job over as quickly as possible!”

> In a survey made for the interventionist Continental Congress for Freedom held in Washington last month, 59 Nebraska editors and publishers reported that their communities were now overwhelmingly in favor of the Administration’s foreign policy, substantially in favor of Neutrality Act repeal. Said one editor: “The so-called ‘Isolationist Midwest’ exists only in the minds of Congressmen who have failed to keep abreast of a great surge of public opinion during recent months.”

If such reports continue, no politician can remain forever oblivious.